Mike Mullin’s "Sunrise"

Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mullin juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really glad this writing thing seems to be working out.

Mullin holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and her three cats.

Here he shares some ideas for casting an adaptation of Sunrise, his third novel:

Since the last time I guest posted in this space, Ashfall has been optioned for development as a television series. However, casting the book is still a complete fantasy exercise for me—authors almost never get a voice in casting.

There’s a good reason not to include me in casting an Ashfall television series—I would be hopelessly bad at it. I watch very little television and only perhaps a dozen or so movies per year—I prefer to spend my time reading. So I had to turn to Twitter to get suggestions for this post.

For Alex, @seaofships suggested casting Nick Robinson.

And as Darla, @dahlia_lala proposed Maisie Williams.

There’s a small problem with their ages: Nick is 19 and Maisie is 15. In my books, of course, Darla is a year and a half older than Alex. But I suppose that is what I get for crowdsourcing the casting suggestions on Twitter. Who would you pick? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Learn more about the book and author at Mike Mullin's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ashfall.

Writers Read: Mike Mullin.

The Page 69 Test: Sunrise.

--Marshal Zeringue